US embassy cable - 04MAPUTO1616

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 MAPUTO 001616 
 
SIPDIS 
FOR AF/FO AND AF/S 
PASS MCC FOR BRIGGS AND GAULL 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/14/2014 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, KDEM, MZ, Elections 04, DHLAKAMA 
SUBJECT: MOZAMBICAN GENERAL ELECTIONS: RENAMO LEADER 
DHLAKAMA CONTINUES TO REJECT RESULTS 
 
REF: MAPUTO 1603 AND PREVIOUS 
 
Classified By: AMBASSADOR HELEN LA LIME FOR REASONS 1.4 (b/d) 
 
1. (SBU) Summary and Comment: RENAMO's Dhlakama continues to 
reject provincial tabulation figures, which show a clear 
Guebuza victory in the presidential election and a strong 
FRELIMO win in parliamentary races. Despite the release of 
an independent parallel vote count largely corroborating the 
partial and non-official results that have been announced so 
far, Dhlakama insists the voting was fundamentally 
fraudulent. While some of RENAMO's allegations are 
plausible, others are not credible, and only Dhlakama and 
those around him are claiming that irregularities made the 
difference. The national-level count is going slowly. There 
is increasing likelihood that the National Elections 
Commission (CNE) will miss the December 17 deadline and 
instead announce final results some time next week. End 
Summary. 
 
2. (U) RENAMO presidential candidate Afonso Dhlakama repeated 
his call for new elections during press conferences December 
10 and 14, again alleging widespread fraud and intimidation 
of his supporters during the December 1 - 2 general elections 
(refs). At the December 14 event, he was joined by the 
fourth- and fifth-place presidential candidates, neither of 
whom received one percent of the vote. Notably absent was 
apparent third-place finisher Raul Domingos, who was 
considered a more serious candidate than the other two. 
 
3. (C) Meanwhile, Dhlakama continues to publicly disparage 
the findings of the Carter Center-backed National 
Observatory's parallel vote tabulation (PVT), which indicate, 
based on a random sampling of polling places, that FRELIMO's 
Guebuza won 64 percent of the ballots for president and the 
party did similarly well in parliamentary races. Late last 
week, National Observatory members met with Guebuza and 
delivered the PVT report, but Dhlakama's people said Dhlakama 
was unavailable, leaving them to drop the report off at his 
office instead. Carter Center representative Nicolas Bravo 
(protect) met with Dhlakama on December 10 in an effort to 
explain the report's findings. However Dhlakama remained 
adamant that the PVT report was based on "forgeries." Bravo 
told emboff December 14 that it is not in the Carter Center's 
mandate to lead the effort to persuade Dhlakama. Instead, he 
said that he is urging the National Observatory to meet 
personally with Dhlakama to try to convince him of the 
validity of the outcome. 
 
4. (C) On December 13 RENAMO delivered to the Embassy a copy 
of its report to the European Union Observation Mission 
(EUOM), which details a wide range of alleged irregularities. 
One fundamental RENAMO complaint throughout the report is 
that its party delegates (official observers) were allegedly 
expelled from and/or denied access to polling stations 
throughout the country, leaving the door open for widespread 
fraud by FRELIMO. (Comment: Although results in a few 
districts suggest some ballot-stuffing, none of the several 
domestic and international observer missions saw anything 
indicating the carefully-planned, nationwide effort that 
RENAMO alleges.) In the document RENAMO also claims that its 
voter base was deliberately disenfranchised through the 
switching of voter rolls at polling stations in RENAMO areas. 
Journalist and Mozambique scholar Joseph Hanlon, who has 
been reporting on events here for more than two decades, has 
circulated a detailed review of the document's allegations, 
their credibility, and the number of votes that might have 
been affected by the various irregularities. He wrote that 
Guebuza's lead was so overwhelming that even if Dhlakama's 
plausible charges proved to be true, and making very generous 
estimates of the number of votes affected, Dhlakama would 
still be roughly half a million votes behind if 
irregularities were corrected. (Note: Latest (December 15) 
figures show that, in fact, Dhlakama would be 700-800,000 
votes behind. The irregularities could matter for the 
parliamentary races, however, as they could cost RENAMO 
several Assembly seats. End Note.) 
 
5. (C) No province was able to meet the December 9 provincial 
deadline for announcing results. Inhambane, the first 
province to publish figures, did so on December 10, and by 
December 14 all but two provinces had reported in. According 
to press reports, the tallies so far from the provinces give 
Guebuza roughly 2 million votes to Dhlakama's one million. 
However, official tabulation at the national level remains 
substantially behind schedule. Despite press reports to the 
contrary, the president of the Electoral Administration 
Technical Secretariat (STAE) admitted privately to the Carter 
Center's Bravo that CNE would not meet the December 17 
deadline to announce final national results. 
 
6. (C) Comment: Dhlakama's berating of the voting process is 
accompanied by wholly unrealistic demands, such as that the 
entire Mozambican population be re-registered and the 
international community fund new national elections in six 
months' time. This posturing by one who seems to be only 
trying to postpone the inevitable appears increasingly 
ridiculous to many Mozambicans, we believe. Dhlakama and 
some of those close to him may still feel that he would have 
won had the process been flawless, but we have heard nothing 
to suggest that anyone else, including most of the RENAMO 
rank and file (many of whom did not vote) thinks so. End 
Comment. 
LA LIME